A "grandiose and yet passionate libretto" Verdi wanted to put into music according to his own statement. Verdi's first setting of a drama by Victor Hugo (Hernani ou l'honneur castillan), written in 1843, fascinates listeners with the close interlocking of the formerly individual "numbers" to form a structural unity and the further perfected depth of the figure drawing - including it's merciless destruction at the end. Ernani is nevertheless not one of the greatest public hits such as Nabucco or La Traviata - like the other three early Verdi operas published in recent years by Marcus Bosch and the Cappella Aquileia. Bosch shows that even the supposedly somewhat weaker works of the great opera genius have their special charms. In Ernani's case, this is once again a highly convincing success: Marcus Bosch, the Czech Philharmonic Choir Brno and the Cappella Aquileia, together with a hand-picked ensemble of singers, turn the first large piece of world literature from Verdi into an intensive music-drama experience.